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First rule of propaganda

First rule of sales, too: know your target.

The Obama team seems to be selling its product over and over again to hip young urbanites. Guys — you win! We concede that demographic! Good luck getting ’em to turn out on election day.

Now you need to go for a chunk of the rest of the electorate.

Strategically, there were so many things wrong with Obama’s so-called Still ad, which pokes fun at McCain for being too old and out of it to use email — even before it turned out John McCain actually lubim some email, but is too damaged from years of torture to type it himself.

As of today, the ad is still up. Which poses the brain hurty question: is it deliberate? Is this Team O’s concept of how you play political hardball?

Wow. When did the Stupid Party get so lucky, and the Evil Party get so stupid?

Take this picture, now. It’s an outtake from a cover shoot for the Atlantic (to think that magazine once published Mark Twain, back in the day when rumors of his demise were etctera). Not really an outtake, it’s the one the photographer wanted to use.

After getting that shot, Greenberg asked McCain to “please come over here” for one more set-up before the 15-minute shoot was over. There, she had a beauty dish with a modeling light set up. “That’s what he thought he was being lit by,” Greenberg says. “But that wasn’t firing.”

What was firing was a strobe positioned below him, which cast the horror movie shadows across his face and on the wall right behind him. “He had no idea he was being lit from below,” Greenberg says. And his handlers didn’t seem to notice it either. “I guess they’re not very sophisticated,” she adds.

That, or they don’t give a shit. Look, sweetie, we aren’t confused about which party is running a scarred-up crusty old bastard and which nominated an attractive, innocent young puppy. Your job is much, much harder. You have to convince us that this crazy-evil angry old sonofabitch isn’t exactly the sort of thing we like in a president.

And remember: this is America we’re talking, not one of those pussy Yoorpian countries.


More on Jill Greenberg, the photographer who took that shot, from the American Digest. We’re classmates! (Well, not really — she went to RISD a decade after I did). In addition to taking a stealth gotcha! shot of McCain, she had some Photoshop Phun of her own with the outtakes. That goes beyond grossly unprofessional and flirts with actionable breach of contract. Here’s hoping you starve, Jill!

Update: Ace has a thread going on this. Someone in the comments, with the euphonious moniker Boobenfloppinschtoppin reminds us that Jill Greenberg is the photographer who caused controversy a couple of years ago for this:

So what is Jill Greenberg doing? She is taking babies, toddlers under three years old, stripping them of their clothes and then provoking them to various states of emotional distress, anger, rage etc. — so that she can then take photos of them this way to “illustrate her personal beliefs.”

Remember that? I sure do. The photographer/blogger quoted above, by the way, got the full liberal treatment for his pains: lies, smears, threats and calls to his boss. I revise and extend: Jill, here’s hoping you die in a fire!

UPUPDATE: by popular demand — aww, I’m just shitting you. Nobody demanded this, I just wanted to hear it again. I think I got ’em all: the complete cast of proposed male action characters from MST3K’s Space Mutiny:


[audio:bigmclargehuge.mp3]

September 15, 2008 — 7:32 am
Comments: 99